This morning, we all woke up in our guest house at the Kwame Danso (Sene District) Hospital. We first attended the “morning devotion” during which the entire hospital staff gets together to pray every morning. Then we split up in twos and set off for our respective CHIPS compounds. Each compound is staffed by one or two Community Health Officers (CHO’s) and serves as a satellite health clinic for the hospital. If you were at the benefit dinner, you may remember Dr. Ofosu explaining that there are five total such compounds in communities surrounding the Kwame Danso (Sene District) hospital. (Kwame Danso is the name of the city.)
Joey and I set off this morning for the village of Bantama, about 15 minutes away from Kwame Danso by car. It’s a nice little village with a lot going on. Everyone seems to be preparing food all day long, either to sell or to eat, except for the children who are mostly in school. We are staying in the CHIPS compound which surprisingly has electricity (but definitely no plumbing). Today we watched Tina, one of the compound’s two CHO’s, handle a variety of patients in the morning, including a baby with malaria and a boy that needed stitches next to his eye after getting smashed in the head with a chair by one of his peers. Then, when the other CHO returned from attending to a rural village, I hopped on the back of their motorbike with Tina and set off for a another rural village, the name of which I won’t even attempt to spell.
We rode about 10 minutes down a bumpy dirt road and arrived at the village. The entire village was buzzing with excitement at the sight of a foreigner. We had a pack of about 40 children following us as we walked house to house. First, we stopped to meet the chief of the village and explain my purpose there. We sat in a circle, me, the chief, his wife, the CHO and a community health volunteer with a crowd of at least 50 people packed around us, all staring silently at me like I was an alien. The chief was extremely welcoming and got a big kick out of me saying “medase, ” or “thank you” in Twi. Afterward, we went house to house to help different patients. Notably, several of the visits were for “family planning” shots (birth control), which Tina explained is currently a big initiative given the impoverished conditions of those in rural communities. Families often have 8+ children, despite having little money to support even themselves, for various cultural reasons.
When it was time to go, we hopped back on the motorbike and heading towards Bantama with a trail of children that chased us as far as they could before giving up. Back in town, Tina took Joey back to Kwame Danso as I took my bucket shower. Now I’m laying on my bed listening to the torrential rain pouring down on the tin roof as Tina prepares dinner. Gotta love the rainy season!
- Jacob
Filed under: Uncategorized
